The Aloaha PDF Editor and the Aloaha PDF Form Server build an excellent team in case you need a PDF form based workflow – maybe even with digital signatures.
We will give you here a short showcase on how such a workflow could work.
Obviously there are many ways to customize such a workflow to meet your requirements!
Upload and publish PDF Form
First you need to upload your PDF Form via the uploader on: http://forms.aloaha.com/formupload.aspx
In case you do not have a form available you can download our demoform: PlainSampleForm
With our online Form Designer you can create your own forms without having to install any local software
When uploading please do not forget to define a notification mail in case you would like to be notified by workflow about every step.
Once the form is uploaded you will get a link such as: http://forms.aloaha.com/pdfforms.aspx?fid=c194f7e735354f808856bdf3096a3407
Please make sure to use the Adobe Reader to fill in the PDF Form!
You can now either distribute your PDF Form Link or just download the prepared PDF Form and distribute it via email.
Save and Submit PDF Form
When you open the uploaded PDF Form with your Adobe Reader (required) you will see that it contains at the top two new red buttons “Save Form” and “Submit Form”.
In case your Adobe Reader shows some warnings that the form cannot be saved you can IGNORE them with our forms!
If you press the button “Save Form” the data will be saved to our Aloaha PDF Form Server. The server will merge the data with the PDF Form and sends it back to your Adobe Reader (it might open in a new tab). You can save now the form to disk and you see that the form is saved incl. the form data.
The notification mail defined during the initial upload will receive an email with the PDF Form and also the Form Data as XML. If the form data contains any email address then every email address will receive that notification as well.
Now you can hit the “Submit Form” Button. Again the data will be sent to the Aloaha PDF Form Server and merged with the original PDF Form. Additionally the form will be sealed/flattened. That means that all form fields are removed and replaced with the static content of the form data. The sealed and flattened PDF automatically digitally signed and RFC 3161 time stamped (configurable)
As with “Save Form” the notification mails will be sent.The will contain two additional links:
One normal http link in the format:
The above link of the notification mail can be used to retrieve the submitted PDF Form from the archive.
Additionally the notification email will contain a link starting with aloaha:
If you downloaded, unzipped and at least started once the Aloaha PDF Editor then the PDF will be opened in the Aloaha PDF Editor for digitally signing.
Please note that in some few cases (depending on your windows policy settings) you need to launch the PDF Editor once as administrator (right mouse click -> Run as Administrator)
Such a link would look like:
Digitally Sign PDF Document
If you open a PDF with the Aloaha PDF Editor directly from a link starting with aloaha: then all features except signing will be disabled in the PDF Editor.
After the signing process the signed document will be pushed back into the PDF archive. You will receive a notification about the file by mail as usual. The notification mail will contain the two links like:
http://forms.aloaha.com/retrieve.aspx?fid=8eb2901147b94221893a43aeba9109d6
and
aloaha:http://forms.aloaha.com/retrieve.aspx?fid=8eb2901147b94221893a43aeba9109d6
Please note that the archive allows the configuration of:
- How many times a document can be downloaded
- Expiry date of a download link
- Owner- and notification mails
- etc.
More sample forms
We have more sample fillable forms online at: Sample fillable PDF Forms